Worker and Workplace Heterogeneity and Residential Location: A Historical Perspective on Stockholm

Abstract

Most studies of the role of transportation in residential location assume that an individual’s human capital and labor force experience are of no relevance to the location of his or her worksite and to the tradeoff between commuting and housing costs. Recent models often assume a polycentric metropolitan area and do recognize non-central workplace concentrations, but concentrations are undifferentiated by industry or occupation. Traditional traffic models rely upon the number of jobs and workers in different subareas, distance costs, income and sometimes age and family type to explain an observed commuting pattern. It is implicitly assumed that all workers are equally attracted to all kinds of jobs and that, moreover, all workers have the same chance of getting any job.